Farmers meet DM over land encroachment

NOIDA: Farmers from nearly 100 villages in Gautam Budh Nagar met the district magistrate on Wednesday demanding immediate and stringent action against encroachers. District magistrate Nagendra Pratap Singh, in response, has called for a meeting to chalk out an action plan against the land sharks.

The meeting comes in response by farmers to reports carried by TOI on large-scale encroachments of government land and riverbed. The farmers said that Noida and Greater Noida are called planned cities of the country, but mushrooming encroachment will turn the twin cities into slum cluster.

"We have given an ultimatum to the district administration that if stringent action is not taken against land sharks, we will hit the road and protest," said Naresh Yadav, farmers' representative.

On March 13, TOI had reported that the district administration has failed to crack-down on land mafia, who have encroached on the riverbed and are selling pieces of land, some of them with farmhouses built on them, to gullible buyers. And buyers get lured because land sharks manage to procure registration papers.

TOI had visited some of the sites along the riverbed and found large-scale encroachment. Some of the land sharks are offering farmhouses for less than the cost of a flat. A flat is offered on the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway between Rs 70 lakh and Rs 1 crore while we are offering farmhouses at Rs 50 lakh.

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